Abstract

This study aimed to find out the rate of observing ethical issues among counselors and psychologists and the role of their sex and education in this regard. This is a correlative descriptive study conducted on 150 employees randomly selected from government and private counseling and psychology centers. The selected people were all from Tehran, Iran. The study tool was a 37-item questionnaire, designed using codes of ethics and criteria for counseling and psychotherapy. The results show that out of the total score of 37, the mean total of the subjects was 25.07 with standard deviation of 3.28. Therefore, the rate of observing ethics was negatively skewed; in other words, most of the studied people were aware of their professional ethics codes and observed them. Also, there was a meaningful relationship between sex, marital status, level of education and awareness of professional ethics regarding physical contact, intercultural issues and utility of the counseling sessions. Nowadays, counseling and psychotherapy are on high tides and many counseling centers have been established. It is expected that ethics be considered a main course in all educational levels, a main subject to investigate and a criterion to evaluate in counseling and psychotherapy. © 2008 Asian Network for Scientific Information.